Roger Vadim

Filmmaker

Born: 26 January 1928

Died: 11 February 2000 (cancer)

Birthplace: Paris, France

Best known as: Director of And God Created Woman

Name at birth: Roger Vadim Plemiannikov

As a director, Roger Vadim was known for his sensual and sometimes avant-garde films; off-screen he was known for his sensual and sometimes avant-garde lifestyle. He was married five times in all: to actresses Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg and Marie-Christine Barrault, and to heiress Catherine Schneider. Vadim had one child each with Fonda, Stroyberg and Schneider and a fourth child out of wedlock with actress Catherine Deneuve. His best-known film is And God Created Woman (1956), which introduced the innocently voluptuous Bardot. Vadim's 1968 film with Fonda, Barbarella, is often considered a classic of sci-fi camp. His other films include Les liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons, 1959) and Don Juan 73 (1973). He published the personal histories Memoirs of the Devil (1977) and Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda in 1986.

Extra credit: Vadim was married to Bardot from 1952-57. He then was married to Stroyberg from 1958-60 (they had one daughter, Nathalie), to Fonda from 1965-73 (their daughter, Vanessa, was born in 1968), to Schneider from 1975-77 (they had a daughter, Vania) and to Barrault from 1990 until Vadim's death in 2000. Other than Barrault, all the marriages ended in divorce. His son with Deneuve, Christian, was born in 1963... "It is I who coined the term 'discotheque,'" Vadim claims in Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda.